Art show is planned to honor Sand Creek

To celebrate Sand Creek, we're having an art show. Creative people in all mediums are being called forward to express the beauty we now enjoy in and along Sand Creek.

Changes are every where we look in our small town, and we're feeling an urgency to get down to the creek and record our personal impressions of this unique gem that many of us take for granted.

So … we're calling on:

Photographers, choreographers, singers and poets; sculptors and scientists, painters and potters, weavers and storytellers, any medium that will express a feeling or convey an image: You're encouraged to get together on Sept. 12 from 2-5 p.m. in a large showing of your work on and around the creekside wall of the Panida Theater.

This is to be a positive reflection of how important Sand Creek is historically and culturally to our community, and how its close proximity to our lives touches each of us in a unique and wonderful way.

Please contact Gail Lyster at 263-0826 or Diana Schuppell at 265-4237 with any questions or thoughts on this important celebration.

GAIL LYSTER

Sandpoint

Marina, swimming are bad combination

Have you ever swam in an area that had a lot of boat traffic and breathed the fumes? Well, with 600 new docks within two-and-a-half miles of each other, you'll get your chance. With the Dover Marina and the condo project next to City Beach. The quality of recreation in this "resort destination" is about to be impacted in a big way.

The Pend Oreille River fishing isn't good now and, with the increased boat density, can it get any better? The Dover Marina is more than 400 feet into the river. Will it cause traffic congestion? Probably. But if I were young, I'd apply for a marine patrol job now. There could be a long-term career in it.

CHRIS MURPHY

Dover

Sand Creek route

remains bad choice

The Sand Creek route would have been a bad decision in the '50s, when the practical benefits of the byway far outweighed aesthetic considerations. It would have been a worse decision in the '70s and '80s when Sandpoint's character as a resort attraction was in its infancy. But now … to even consider it as an option is profoundly tragic.

Community leaders, don't we learn anything from history? Many communities sought practical solutions to their traffic problems in the 1950s and '60s and made the waterfront mistake, only to spend millions a few decades later reclaiming it.

Sandpoint is becoming a major tourist destination. Therefore, the dynamics that influence our decisions are changing. Sandpoint isn't just a community with a practical need for routing traffic around the city like it was in the '50s. At that time, destroying the tranquility of the waterfront for the sake of a quick solution didn't matter, but presently, it is profoundly important to preserve, enhance and develop our waterfront for, and not against, the direction of growth.

There are other options, which ITD said they didn't want to talk about at the meeting 11 years ago. "It's Sand Creek or nothing." (How else do you think they got the majority present to vote for the route?) They have their agenda. It's good for them, but it's not good for our community, our generation or generations to come. Don't let them do it.

DANIEL HEINTZ

Sandpoint